Equal pay for equal work is a principle deeply embedded in the American economy. Congress wrote it into Depression Era laws through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Twenty-five years later Congress restated the principle of equal pay for equal work in the Equal Pay Act of 1963.
More recently Alabama native Lilly Ledbetter played a pivotal role in expanding the equal pay for equal work rules as the catalyst for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
Most people, it seems, understand the principle and deem it fair and just. Certainly most want to make sure that when they are personally involved they are not discriminated against and benefit from the equal pay for equal work principle.
That is one reason a lot of people have difficulty with the story Jesus told as recorded in Matthew 20:1–16.
Agreeing on a price
Jesus tells of a landowner who hired day laborers at the agreed upon price of one “denarius” which was the average working man’s pay for a day. A couple of hours later the landowner saw other day laborers and commissioned them to work in his vineyard and promised to pay them “what is right.”
At least three more times (noon, three in the afternoon and an hour before quitting time) the landowner sent additional workers into the fields with the promise to pay them “what is right,” the story says.
When it came time to settle up, the land owner gave those who had worked an hour a full day’s pay. Those who had worked three hours and half a day also received a denarius.
By this time, the workers who had worked all day were getting excited, the story continues. If those who worked only part of the day got a full day’s pay, imagine how much we are going to get, they reasoned (v. 10).
When the landowner gave them the amount to which they had agreed, the workers grumbled. Unfair they claimed.
Others got this much for only one hour of work. We deserve more because we worked longer.
There is the principle — equal pay for equal work.
The landowner saw things differently. He said he had been faithful to his agreement with those who were first in the field and asked why the workers were jealous of his generosity to others?
Secretly many of us may side with the workers in this story. If the landowner is going to be generous why not be generous with those who worked the longest, we ask. The hardest workers deserve the greatest reward, we reason.
At the core of the story is the attitude of the workers. Even though they got what had been promised they felt mistreated because others got the same amount for less work. These workers were unable to celebrate what they had and instead pouted over the generosity of the landowner to others.
Frequently, Christians are like these workers. We pout over what we perceive as unfairness rather than celebrate what we have.
Years ago a co-worker shared how he struggled with this story during the death of his wife from breast cancer.
Like the workers in the story, my fellow minister felt wronged by God when the diagnosis was first made. After all, he had followed God since childhood. He was a pastor and then a denominational worker. His was a “good” family. His boys were active in church, one even called to vocational ministry.
He had labored in the Lord’s field all of his life. It was unfair that his wife should have this disease. Others who had not worked as long or as hard for the Lord, others who did not even acknowledge the Lord, did not have this cancer.
My friend said he felt like he had earned better. Where was the principle of equal pay for equal work?
Only in his struggle with God after his wife’s death did my friend begin to understand that God had kept His word and provided everything He had promised.
God promised forgiveness for those who confess their sin (1 John 1:9). He promised reconciliation making us His children (1 John 3:1). He promised to companion us until the end of the ages (Matt. 28:20). He promised we will be with Him for eternity (John 14:2–3).
“Christ in you, the hope of glory,” declares Colossians 1:23. That is what God gives to those who enter His fields in the early morning as well as to those who enter His fields just before quitting time. That is what God gives to all. God gives out of His loving generosity, not because of one’s labor.
In the meantime, what theologians sometimes call God’s “common grace” continues to work. Jesus alluded to this in His Sermon on the Mount when He declared, “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45).
The Apostle Paul pointed to the regular work of nature’s principles as applying to all and not as indication of God’s blessings or curses on any individual or community (Acts 14:17).
Giving thanks
Eventually my co-worker was able to live by 1 Thessalonians 5:18 where the apostle says to “give thanks in all circumstances;” not because the circumstances are God’s will for one’s life but because amid whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, God’s will is that we concentrate on what we have — forgiveness, reconciliation, companionship of the Holy Spirit and hope for eternity.
Such gifts are always worth giving thanks. And they come because of the generosity of the Father, not because they are earned through labor in the field.
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